Naked ambition

If you’re the type of guy who prefers to do his cruising bare-arsed naked, in the company of other sweaty, bare-arsed naked blokes, there’s now a place where you can do it every Friday night: Ken’s at Kensington sauna.

The sauna’s nude night, Buck Naked, which started out as an occasional event just five years ago, has now become a weekly fixture.

Every week, a random assortment of guys are handing over as much as $21 to take all their clothes off and prowl the corridors of this renowned venue with their good, bad or frankly indifferent manhoods on display for all to see.

It’s not the only place where this kind of thing is happening, either.

Other sex-without-promises venues around town have introduced their own regular nude events over the past few years, which means that if you’re the kind of guy who likes to see the merchandise before he samples it, you can now do so, many times a month, in a variety of dimly-lit locations.

The increasing popularity of nude events makes me wonder if gay Sydney is becoming a more promiscuous place -“ although I think the ultimate answer to that is a big, fat, uncut yes.

Mind you, it could just mean that Sydney’s promiscuous hardcore is getting more promiscuous and more hardcore, while the rest of us are off living the modern homosexual dream while shopping for modular seating and raffia place-mats with our husbands at the Moore Park SupaCenta.

But part of me is rather pleased that Buck Naked has gone weekly.

As a born, bred and patriotic Sydneysider, I feel a kind of pride that our city has a critical mass that’s big enough to make all kinds of fun things happen, whether they be mass civic celebrations like the Olympics, or simply trashy events like all-nude man-on-man cruising nights. I mean, you can bet that London, Paris and Berlin have these kinds of events, right?

I guess there will be some gay men -“ the raffia place-mat brigade -“ who will turn their noses up at what I’m saying.

But the funny thing about all this is that you can never quite tell when you meet a guy whether he’d be the type who’s into nude cruising -“ just like you can never quite tell when you meet a guy whether his manhood is going to look good, bad, or frankly indifferent.

Unless, of course, he’s nude at the time.